Infinite Regress (33 page)

“I don’t know how,” Emily said. She shook her head. “And even if I could, I wouldn’t.”

Caleb gave her an odd look. “Even if it’s something really useful?”

Emily shook her head, again. She’d read a book, years ago, about someone who’d been sucked into an alternate world. One of its sequels had involved the hero traveling back to Earth for a short period, only to find himself nearly trapped on his old homeworld. She couldn’t recall the rest of the details—the book had been very religious, she thought, and she hadn’t liked it—but the whole idea was nightmarish. Why would she ever want to go back to Earth? What would she do there, after spending so long learning magic? She wasn’t even sure if magic worked on Earth.

You could punch your stepfather in the face
, a voice at the back of her mind whispered.
Or turn the bastard into a slug and step on him.

She ignored it. “We might get stuck there,” she said. She knew roughly what Shadye had done, but Shadye hadn’t risked traveling to Earth himself. Hell, he hadn’t really understood that he
was
searching through alternate worlds. “It isn’t worth the risk.”

Caleb nodded, then rose and held out a hand. “Let’s go,” he said. “Race you to the top of the mountain?”

“Just a gentle walk,” Emily said. “Please.”

She dispelled the privacy wards and followed Caleb out of the room and down the stairwell to the main doors. A handful of coaches were heading down to Dragon’s Den, but they walked past them and out towards the edge of the grounds. She took Caleb’s hand as soon as they were past the outermost wards, torn between relief that he hadn’t rejected her and fear for the future. Whatever he might think, she trusted him.

... But telling him the truth risked letting yet another cat out of the bag. If someone forced Caleb to talk...

Forget about it for the moment
, she told herself, as they walked up the path. The sun was just starting to sink, high overhead; a cool breeze blew around them as they walked higher.
Just relax and enjoy yourself
.

P
ROFESSOR
L
OCKE LOOKED EXASPERATED WHEN
E
MILY
and Cabiria entered the chamber closest to the gates. Sergeant Miles had not only gone through all the new precautions with them, he’d made it clear that any further explorations were to be done in teams of three. Emily had half-hoped that one of the other students would join Cabiria and her, but Professor Locke had insisted on leading them personally down the new series of tunnels he’d located.

“Stay behind me,” he ordered, as they gathered their supplies and readied themselves for the walk. “And don’t talk to anyone else on the way.”

Emily and Cabiria exchanged glances as he led them through the gates and down into the tunnel network, but said nothing. The dust was almost completely gone; the air was surprisingly clear, although there a musty stench still hung in the atmosphere. A handful of students, mainly Third Years, copied the runes on the walls, supervised by Professor Eleas and Professor Lombardi. Professor Eleas had to be delighted and bemused, Emily thought, at discovering so many new runes. Figuring out what they all did would take a lifetime.

“I was following the traces of power flowing within the walls,” Professor Locke said, as they slipped away from the students. The floors grew increasingly dusty as they made their way further into the tunnel network. “The power runs downwards to a still lower level. And if my deductions are correct, the next set of gates should be down here.”

Emily frowned, inwardly. They
had
been trying to map the tunnel network, but several other explorers had reported the tunnels shifting and changing too. No one else had been trapped, thankfully, yet it made map-making rather pointless. There was no way to be
sure
that Professor Locke’s set of doors were anywhere near them, assuming they existed at all... and, if they were protected as heavily as the first set of gates, finding them would be pretty much impossible. But there was no point in trying to bring that to Professor Locke’s attention. His determination—his madness—to unlock the secrets of the ancients himself had only grown stronger after he’d been forced to allow others to enter the tunnels too.

Cabiria touched her hand, lightly. “Did you make up with Caleb?”

“Sort of,” Emily muttered. It had been awkward over the last few days, even though she’d done her best to make time for him. There was a rift between them that hadn’t existed before, no matter what they said or did. It depressed her, when she forced herself to think about it. She didn’t know how to proceed. “I don’t know if we’ll get over it.”

“My parents used to row a lot, when I was a child,” Cabiria admitted. “Over me, mainly. My father even wondered if my mother had stepped out on him, even though the blood test confirmed that he had fathered me. They made up eventually.”

She shrugged. “Men,” she added. “I wouldn’t have one in my life, personally.”

Emily glanced at her. “You don’t like men?”

“I have my work,” Cabiria said, primly. “My sisters will carry on the family line without me, I am sure. And if not... well, I can find someone suitable and ask him to father my children, then leave me in peace.”

Emily honestly wasn’t sure what to make of
that
. Lady Barb had told her that most female magicians had at least two or three children before they turned thirty, although
she
had no children of her own. Emily understood the importance of having children, of expanding the number of magicians, but she couldn’t understand how anyone would simply give birth and then practically abandon the children. But then, the rich and powerful had been leaving their children in the care of others for centuries. King Randor had done the same with Alassa.

But if I had children
, she thought,
I would want to bring them up myself
.

“There’re quite a few clever newborn magicians my age,” Cabiria added. “One of them would make good breeding stock...”

“Be quiet,” Professor Locke snapped, without looking back. “We’re approaching the gates.”

Emily rolled her eyes at his back—she heard Cabiria suppress a giggle—and then started to study the stone walls. There was no trace of any gates—or runes, for that matter. Pure, unblemished stone formed the walls. She reached out to touch them and felt a flicker of magic passing through the stone, heading onwards... she followed it with her eyes and saw a faint shimmer covering part of the wall. Professor Locke let out a cry of triumph and ran forward, the gates shimmering into existence as he approached. The doorway swung open at his touch, revealing a stairwell leading downwards into the earth.

“Ha!” Professor Locke said. He plunged onwards, practically slipping and sliding down the dusty stairwell. “Come on!”

Emily hesitated, then used one of the chat parchments to alert Sergeant Miles to their discovery as Cabiria followed Professor Locke down the stairs. The sergeant acknowledged a moment later, warning her to be careful. Emily tensed as she entered the stairwell herself, almost gagging at the dust in the air, but the gates stayed open behind them. All things considered, she noted as she walked gingerly downwards, finding the second set of gates had been suspiciously easy.

“Finally,” Professor Locke said, as she reached the bottom. “Where have you been?”

“I was alerting Sergeant Miles,” Emily said. She had a feeling Professor Locke would be upset, but Gordian
had
ordered them to keep the sergeant informed. “He has to know where we’re going.”

Professor Locke gave her a nasty look, but said nothing. Instead, he turned and held up a hand, sensing the ebb and flow of magic in the air. It was stronger here, Emily noted; the strands of magic led further into the tunnels, rather than plunging further underground. Odd-looking runes covered the walls once again. One wall, covered in so many runes that it looked like a giant mural, drew her attention. The runes were drawn up around a spidery shape that looked malevolent, even though the drawing was oddly blurred. She reached out to touch it, but yanked her hand back as she felt a flicker of magic keeping the drawing preserved.

“Those two are the ancient runes for
warning
and
danger
,” Cabiria commented. She’d taken her sketchbook from her bag and started to copy the runes. “What do you think it is?”

“I have no idea,” Emily said. She’d heard stories about giant spiders—wild magic had mutated spiders to the point where entire towns had been overrun by creatures the size of small cars—long before Shadye had sent them against Whitehall. They represented little threat to magicians. Fire killed giant spiders as surely as it killed their smaller brethren. “But if they thought it was a danger.”

She joined Cabiria in sketching out the runes as Professor Locke paced the chamber, tracing out the magic patterns as they hummed through the stone walls. The runes were easy enough to copy, but the spider-creature seemed to change shape every time she looked at it. She felt an odd shiver running down her spine, remembering the statue... what had it been, really? It had been so perfect that, if it had been anyone else, she would have wondered if someone had been petrified and abandoned, hundreds of years ago. But she
knew
she was alive and well...

“This way, I think,” Professor Locke said, pointing to a corridor. “Come on.”

Emily felt her head swimming as soon as she entered the corridor, the world twisting and turning around her until she had no idea if she was coming or going. She gritted her teeth and advanced forward, walking straight into Professor Locke’s back when he stopped. The impact knocked the professor forward, breaking him out of his trance. He held a hand in the air and muttered a spell, his voice too low for her to make out the words. But the sensation vanished so abruptly that she almost fell over and had to grab his arm to keep her balance.

“Interesting,” Professor Locke said. He didn’t seem to notice her problems. “Very interesting indeed.”

Cabiria coughed as she kicked up great clouds of dust. “What was
that
?”

“A labyrinth spell,” Professor Locke said. Oddly, he sounded disappointed. “They were quite common as a defensive spell for several hundred years, until someone came up with a relatively simple counterspell. A magician would cast it on his house, secure in the knowledge that any intruders would be trapped within the spell until he came to inspect and release them. It was simple enough to key it to the magician’s bloodline.”

Emily nodded, inwardly, as they reached the end of the corridor. There was no spell, she’d been told, that didn’t have a counterspell, nothing so powerful that it simply couldn’t be stopped. One day, she felt sure, the wards she used to protect her home and notebooks would be broken as casually as Professor Locke broke the labyrinth spell. By then, she hoped, society would have advanced to the point where there were countermeasures to some of her more dangerous ideas. If
anyone
with magic could blow up a city, which they could with the nuke-spell, she doubted society would last more than a few years.

The corridor opened into a small chamber, with doors leading in three different directions. Professor Locke strode to the middle door, then stopped as he glanced at the door to the right. Emily blinked in surprise as he turned and practically
ran
into the chamber, moving with astonishing speed for a man of his age. She hesitated, unsure if something hadn’t lured him inside to a grisly fate and then hurried forward when she heard a cry from inside the room. Bracing herself, she walked forward...

... And felt her mouth open with delight.

The chamber was a small library. A stone bookshelf had been carved into the wall, holding thirty to forty manuscripts so ancient she doubted they could be touched safely without magic. Nearby, a wooden desk and chair had been placed against the wall, clearly designed to allow a reader to study the books without removing them from the chamber. Indeed, if some of the stories about old libraries Lady Aliya had told her were true,
trying
to remove the books would prove fatal. The Librarians Guild had no hesitation in cursing or hexing anyone foolish enough not to return their borrowed books on time.

Professor Locke started forward, but stopped as magic flared in the air. He muttered a vile word, just loudly enough for Emily to hear, as he produced a silver wand from his belt and waved it towards the wards. Spellwork flickered in and out of existence, revealing a complicated network of wards that both preserved and protected the books. Emily had seen Lady Aliya cast similar wards, back when she’d been working in the school library, but these were an order of magnitude more complex. Taking them apart would take hours, she suspected, even for Professor Lombardi. She had no idea if Professor Locke could crack the protections himself.

She exchanged another look with Cabiria, then cleared her throat. “Professor...”

Professor Locke swung round to glare at her. “What?”

“Wouldn’t it be better,” Emily asked, “to allow Professor Lombardi to study the ward network before you try to break it?”

“These books could hold the answers to everything,” Professor Locke snapped. His eyes blazed with a wild light. “The answers to the questions I have been asking for years could be right in front of us!”

“Yes, but the protections might destroy them if they think they’re under attack,” Emily pointed out. She understood his feelings all too well. “The ancients might have keyed the wards to keep their knowledge out of unfriendly hands.”

“Inconceivable,” Professor Locke thundered.

“They wanted to keep their secrets,” Cabiria added, as if to the enfeebled. “Professor,
they
didn’t know that
we
would be the first people to set foot in this chamber for centuries.”

Professor Locke’s face darkened, but he nodded ruefully and led the way back out of the chamber. “No one is to go in there without my authorization,” he said, firmly. “And you are
not
to mention the books to
anyone
. Each of those manuscripts is literally priceless. I know men who would cheerfully sell their entire families to the necromancers just to get their hands on
one
of those books.”